What is IVF?

IVF is a treatment in which we’re going to obtain the eggs and inseminate them with a partner’s or donor’s sperm to create embryos. These embryos are going to be later cultured for 5 days until they reach the so-called blastocyst stage. Then we’re going to choose which embryos are going to be transferred and which ones should be frozen.

With regard to the indications, there are many indications to do IVF. IVF is an elective technique for patients with tube problems, patients with endometriosis, patients in which there is a problem with the egg quality because IVF is the only where we can really assess the quality of the eggs and also, of course, in those cases where there is a severe male factor and in which IUI, cannot be done.

It’s important to say that IVF, on top of being probably, the most common treatment in assisted reproduction, can also work as a diagnostic tool. As I said before, it is the only way to assess that certain processes can be done properly, like the egg quality, percentage of fertilization, how many embryos become blastocysts, and their quality. Sometimes, it’s not just that we want the patient to get pregnant, but what also is very important is the information we gather from this treatment to decide how we must proceed later.

IVF is  the joining of a woman’s egg and a man’s sperm in a laboratory dish. In Vitro means outside of the body. IVF is a procedure where a special medical technique is used to help a woman become pregnant, such as a case where a couple who after one year of active sex without any contraceptive method does not achieve pregnancy. At this moment we have to decide whether to begin any treatment in accordance to the characteristics of the couple or the patient.

Translated IVF or In Vitro Fertilization means conception or fertilization in a glass or in a laboratory. It’s one of the most sophisticated approaches or techniques of assisted reproduction and this is the one performed in the lab then, that is the connection of a healthy female gamete – the egg and the healthy sperm cell – the healthy male gamete.

IVF or IN-Vitro-Fertilisation is the treatment finally for any kind of or most of the fertility problems. It includes a treatment for the patient, then we have a live stage where we are going to create the embryos and culture the embryos and then we are going to transfer those embryos into the womb of the patient. It depends on the reason but most fertility problems can be solved by IVF or at least can be treated with IVF like problems in the ovaries (how they are working) or some issues related to cervical infertility. The classic indication for IVF or at least started in that way was when the tubes are not working properly or they have some illness like they are full of fluid. Of course when the spermogram is not great (we don’t have enough sperm that are moving well or the quality in general is not good). Those indications for example are patient that goes for an IVF treatment.

IVF stands for in vitro fertilization, which actually means a fertilized egg and sperm outside the body, in special culture in the laboratory.

Couples that need IVF are usually couples that the woman has problems with her tubes, which make spontaneous fertilization very difficult. Women who have poor ovarian reserve usually, at the age of more than 40, but of course, this can happen even in younger women. Women have ovulatory problems, which means problems with the ovulation that persist and are not leading to pregnancy with other ways of provoking ovulation.

Women and men, couples with unexplained infertility, which is infertility that cannot be explained by any reason. Usually, the solution for these couples is IVF. The best success rates are happening with IVF. Endometriosis and problems with the sperm, when the sperm is very low, and in which case, we usually use a variation of IVF, which is called ICSI.

A lot of doctors and fertility people brandish saw the name IVF expecting everyone to know exactly what it is but essentially IVF it stands for In Vitro Fertilization which means doing the fertilization outside of the body, in the lab and normally a typical IVF process involves several steps, unfortunately most of those steps involve the woman.
The first step is to stimulate the ovaries, so use medications (usually injections) that are taken daily to stimulate the ovaries to grow more eggs than normal and the reason why we do that it’s much more successful doing IVF with several eggs than if you just did it in a natural cycle where you could only collect one or two eggs at the most. So you use the stimulation to collect more eggs to boost the chances of it working. During that injection phase normally go for one or two scans to monitor how the ovaries are responding and then the scans will monitor the size of follicles which are where the eggs grow. After about 10 days and also when the follicles look ready and you’ll take another injection and that’s to get the eggs ready to be ovulated and matured. Women will then attend for an egg collection procedure which is done under ultrasound guidance and normally with sedation or a light general anaesthetic and that involves transvaginal scans – are exactly like the scans that have been done throughout treatment but a little needle just goes along the edge of the scan probe, into the ovaries to drain all of the fluid and collect the eggs. On the same day, the man would normally produce a sperm sample or if donor sperm is used that would be thawed. IVF is when the eggs and the sperm are essentially prepared and then mixed together in a dish. A lot of people when they think of IVF, see this picture of an egg with a needle going into it – that’s a special type of IVF something we called ICSI and that’s done when the sperm quality is not quite so good but a lot of people think that that’s what IVF is but normally IVF when the sperm quality is good is mixing the eggs and sperm together. Then I would leave the eggs overnight and the following day, have a look to see how many of those eggs are fertilized and a fertilized egg is called an embryo. Embryos are then grown for several days and monitored and there’s various different ways to monitor them and then one of the embryos will hopefully make it to a good stage and then be able to be transferred and that’s a much lesser procedure than the egg collection (it’s a bit more like a smear test). Women take some medicine progesterone medication and then do a pregnancy test about two weeks after the egg collection to see whether they’re pregnant or not. Hopefully they’re pregnant. If they are about three weeks later, you could do an ultrasound scan where hopefully you see a baby and a heartbeat. So that sort of in summary, is briefly what a cycle of IVF is. There’s those different steps and they’re often done in different orders based on whether there’s embryos frozen in which case you don’t have to go through the whole egg collection process but that in summary is what IVF is.

In vitro fertilization commonly known as IVF, is one of the several assisted reproduction techniques available in fertility centers that helps people with fertility problems to have a healthy baby. The success of an IVF treatment depends on multiple factors, and the woman’s age and the eggs quality are some of the most important factors. Moreover, the quality of the semen sample will also have a big importance on the probabilities of the success of the treatment.
 
After being hormonally stimulated, the woman will undergo a removal of eggs from the ovary through the process called egg collection. Subsequently this will be followed by the fertilization of the eggs with the sperm of the partner or a donor inside the lab. After that, the evolution of the embryos in culture will be observed until the transfer into the woman’s uterus or the freezing of those embryos with good quality.
 
We can find two different types of IVF, depending on the technique used for fertilizing the oocyte with the sperm. 
 
I will start talking about conventional IVF. For performing this technique, we have to put together in the same culture dish, the oocytes and the sperm sample and we only have to wait until they are able to fertilize on their own. 
 
On the other hand, we have the ICSI technique, the intracytoplasmic sperm injection, that basically it is based on introducing the sperm inside the oocyte through a microinjection with a very thin needle. This technique requires more experience to be performed and more manipulation of the gametes, but it has very good outcomes in certain patients.
 
Performing one or the other IVF technique will depend on the infertility condition of the couple or the woman, and also the facilities of the clinic.
 
And which patients are qualified for each technique?
 
So, to be able to perform a conventional IVF it is important that the woman doesn’t have any uterine abnormalities and to be capable of producing mature oocytes. On the other hand, the sperm has to be of good quality. And what do I mean by good quality? The semen sample needs to have a good concentration, morphology and motility to give the sperm the possibility to reach the egg and fertilize it without problems. 
 
On the other hand, if we don’t have this diagnostic, if the semen sample comes from a testicular biopsy, low sperm quality, bad oocyte quality or any other condition that can have a huge effect on the treatment, it is recommended to perform an ICSI with more likelihood of success.
 
 

IVF means In-Vitro-Fertilisation which means fertilisation takes place outside of the body. To do it, we need to take out gametes. The gametes for the man would be semen and the gametes for the woman would be the eggs. They would be fertilised In-Vitro – the laboratory. The procedure in the laboratory normally lasts like 3 minutes because this is only adding semen that was prepared to the eggs in the dish. That is IN-VITRO-FERTILISATION.

IVF is a procedure in which we retrieve the eggs of a woman, and at the same time, we use the sperm of a man if the woman has a partner or the sperm from a donor sperm bank if the woman doesn’t have a partner or if the partner’s sperm is defective.

We use in vitro fertilization in the laboratory, which means that we facilitate the embryo with the egg fertilization either using the standard IVF procedure or using inter cytoplasmic sperm injection procedure. The fertilization itself is happening outside the woman’s body, but of course, it is normal fertilization and normal growth of the embryo,  we perform the embryo transfer procedure. It is a very straightforward procedure in which the embryo or the embryos are inserted into the woman’s uterus with a very fine catheter.  Therefore, we are maximizing the chances of pregnancy.